Antonio Ayuso: "If you are from science, you cannot be from humanities; it is ridiculous"
Aeronautical engineer and father of Manu and Hèctor, aged 18 and 16. He has worked at the European Space Agency, on the design of one of the modules of the International Space Station, as well as other projects. He publishes 'A Peaceful Turbulence' (Libros del Asteroide), a text that is simultaneously literary, scientific, and philosophical where he explains to a son how the study of the universe has helped him discover new ways of understanding and enjoying life. A text that aims to erase the separation between arts and science.
Watching a child is hypnotic. You look at them closely and often see things in them that you recognize yourself in. And when you see something you don't recognize, you marvel, thinking where they must have gotten it from. One day, your young son told you: "Death has entered me and I don't know what's wrong with me, but today it's not leaving me."
— This was told to me when I was four or five years old. It was the appearance of death in his life. The notion of his existence. The disappearance. An infinity that you cannot grasp. The book, A Peaceful Turbulence, is born from my inability to tell him anything at that moment.
Growing up means learning that some things don't go away, that they last.
— Yes, I totally agree. When young children live in a permanent state of surprise, they contemplate what happens before them and it is a continuous festival of opportunities. For them, it must be easy to believe that everything is ephemeral, that possibilities are always infinite. And, suddenly, one day they realize that no, that some things remain. Some things remain, not all. And they don't always remain the ones they would have chosen. And time passes and some bad things endure until one day they realize that the only thing they can do is accept them.
Explain to the children – and in the book– that we all look at the world through one pair of glasses or another. In fact, being a parent is teaching them that they can use many glasses.
— I grew up thinking that, one way or another, reality was built on certainties, but I came to discover that most of these certainties were fictions, accepted and shared. These constructions are the glasses with which we look at the world. There is no problem in wearing them. In fact, they are necessary to find your place in the world. But it is important to know that you are wearing them and to ask yourself if they are the ones you really want to wear, because wearing the wrong glasses can lead you to pain and despair.
When are your privileged moments to speak?
— I have the good fortune to have greatly enjoyed watching my children play football. I've spent a large part of the weekends taking them from one field to another. Two games every weekend. Two round trips, often at ungodly hours. On the way there, we would talk about the match preparation, about the standings. On the way back, we would talk about how the match had gone. In any case, the most important thing is not football, but intimacy.
Sure.
— Once this intimacy is achieved, you can then talk about any other topic: friends, studies, loves, politics, fears, dreams. It is essential to keep this intimacy fresh.
How do you carry the longing for when they were little?
— Badly. My wife laughs at me. I wouldn't want them to grow up. I'd want them always with me, stuck to the sofa, with their legs tangled, on a Friday evening, watching a movie. All this ended when they started going out. As I tell you all this, I realize that the older one is about to get his driving license. I'm already trembling.
Are you from science or arts?
— For the moment, they are more into sciences. I see them more comfortable with them. High school is defined by the urgency to define your future academic path. But I don't like this specialization taken to the absurd. If you are in sciences, you cannot be in humanities. It's ridiculous.
How do you help them find their calling?
— It is terribly complicated for me. I don't know what to do. On the one hand, I would recommend that they study humanities because they would have access to the arts, poetry, painting, thought. But on the other hand, I also see that the world we live in is mostly written in mathematical, scientific, technological language. I see myself in a dilemma that has me blocked.
We started with a sentence from the small one. We end with one from the big one.
— Manu was a very active baby, critically active, I would say. Everything was difficult with him, and they diagnosed him with everything, until his fifth birthday arrived. The same day he turned five, he approached his mother and me and told us that he knew he had behaved badly until then, but that from that moment on he would behave well. That made us laugh a lot. My wife and I laughed. Well, then, as the years went by, we saw that he kept his word.